The Crown, the Cross, and the Kingdom
MASS Státuit ei
LESSON Ecclesiasticus 31: 8-11
GOSPEL St Luke 19:12-26
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
Carissimi, the Church today sets before us a man who possessed almost everything that men ordinarily desire and yet became a saint because he understood that none of it was really his. Saint Stephen of Hungary possessed a crown, a kingdom, treasure, armies, law, prestige and the obedience of other men. He was born in 977, succeeded his father Geza as ruler of the Magyars in 997, was crowned King of Hungary about the year 1000, reigned until his death in 1038, and was canonised in 1083. His lifetime therefore stands across one of the decisive transitions in European history. When Stephen was born, Christianity was still insecure among the Magyar peoples; when he died, Hungary possessed the foundations of a Christian kingdom: dioceses, churches, monasteries, clergy, Christian law and a conscious place within Latin Christendom. Yet the Church begins today not by praising his political achievement but by going deeper: “The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom, and his tongue shall speak judgment: the law of his God is in his heart.” Before Christ could reign through Stephen over Hungary, Christ had first to reign within Stephen.
Stephen had married Gisela of Bavaria in 996, and only a year later, in 997, succeeded his father. He did not inherit a comfortably Christian nation whose institutions merely required maintenance. He inherited a people in transition, divided between the newly planted Faith and ancestral paganism. Christianity affected not simply private devotion but law, political allegiance, customs and the whole conception of authority. Stephen’s task therefore required courage. He promoted the building of churches, established and supported ecclesiastical structures, defended Hungary’s communion with Rome and suppressed the pagan reaction which threatened to overturn the Christianisation of the realm. Around 1000, under Pope Sylvester II, his kingship received solemn Christian recognition. But the most important thing about Saint Stephen is not that he became a powerful ruler. It is that the ruler knew himself to be ruled.
Hence the apparently strange Epistle which the Church gives us for a king: “Blessed is the man that is found without blemish, and that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures.” Then comes the sentence which unlocks Stephen’s sanctity: “He that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed, and could do evil things, and hath not done them.” A hermit may be removed from many opportunities for tyranny; a king possesses them daily. Stephen could command, confiscate, punish, enrich favourites and destroy enemies. He possessed what fallen man so often desires: the power to make his wishes effective. Yet Scripture praises the just man precisely because he could have transgressed and did not. The true test of character is often what a man does when nobody can easily prevent him from doing otherwise. Saint Stephen possessed a kingdom without allowing the kingdom to possess him.
Here Christian kingship differs radically from the sovereignty imagined by the modern world. Stephen could make laws, but he could not make evil good or good evil. He governed men, but he himself remained governed. Above the throne of Hungary stood the throne of God; above Stephen’s crown stood the Crown of Christ; above Stephen’s judgments stood a judgment at which Stephen himself would one day appear. This is why today’s Gospel is the parable of the nobleman who departs to receive a kingdom and entrusts money to his servants with the command, “Trade till I come.” When he returns, he requires an account. The servant is never the proprietor. What he possesses is entrusted to him for a time.
Stephen understood his kingdom in precisely this way. His forty-one years of rule, from 997 until 1038, were a stewardship which would eventually have to be rendered back to God. The Gospel therefore becomes frighteningly personal. The servant who wraps his pound in a napkin does not squander it in vice or steal it; he merely returns it unused, and Christ condemns him. We shall be judged not only for evil committed but for good omitted, graces sterilised and duties deliberately left barren. Stephen received a people among whom Christianity was precarious and handed on a kingdom in which the Faith possessed enduring institutions. The talent had multiplied.
And herein lies an uncomfortable parallel with our own age. Stephen inherited a substantially pagan society and laboured to make it Christian. We inherited the remains of a Christian civilisation and have watched much of it labour to become pagan again. The new paganism calls itself neutrality. Christ may be tolerated privately provided He makes no public claim. He may console individuals, but He must not judge laws, education, marriage, medicine, economics or morality. Yet if Christ is God, His authority does not cease at the church door. The terrible sentence of today’s Gospel—“We do not wish this man to be king over us”—is the voice of every civilisation which wants the fruits of Christianity without the sovereignty of Christ.
But the feast does not permit us simply to condemn governments and societies. The Introit turns the accusation inward: “the law of his God is in his heart.” Before Stephen could place the Cross over a kingdom, the Cross had to be planted in Stephen. Before he could require order from others, he had to subject himself. We may deplore apostasy outside while maintaining a small pagan province within ourselves. Every mortal sin says, in effect: “We do not wish this man to be king over us.” Not here, Lord. Thou mayest govern my creed but not my appetites; my public profession but not this private attachment. The restoration of the Kingship of Christ therefore begins somewhere less romantic than parliament or palace: it begins in the human heart, in prayer, penance, confession and the surrender of our own will.
The Secret of today’s Mass then takes us deeper. The Church asks that we who “celebrate the mysteries of our Lord’s passion, may strive to imitate what we commemorate.” Stephen’s crown must finally be interpreted by the Cross. Christ manifests His Kingship most perfectly when He gives Himself. His authority is sacrificial. Therefore all genuinely Christian authority—royal, episcopal, priestly or paternal—becomes corrupted when it becomes possession rather than service. A ruler does not own his nation; a bishop does not own the Church; a priest does not own the faithful; a father does not own his family. Authority is received from God for the good of those entrusted to us, and the Cross is its measure.
Then came Stephen’s greatest personal sorrow. His only surviving son and heir, Saint Emeric, died before him in 1031. Stephen had spent decades establishing a Christian kingdom, and suddenly the succession upon which he had hoped its future might securely rest was shattered. Here he encountered a lesson every Christian must eventually learn: obedience to God does not give us possession of the outcome. We may build faithfully and still be required to relinquish what we have built. We may hand on the Faith but cannot compel another generation to receive it. Christian stewardship finally ends in surrender.
The ancient Hungarian tradition remembers Stephen at the end of his life entrusting his kingdom and people to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is no sentimental addition to his kingship; it completes it. The ruler who had spent his life receiving authority from God finally returned what he could no longer protect into the hands of the Mother of God. The crown was not clenched more tightly as death approached. It was surrendered.
And Providence gave that surrender an extraordinary date. Saint Stephen died on 15 August 1038, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The earthly king of Hungary departed this life upon the feast when the Church rejoices in Mary taken into heavenly glory. Humanly, Stephen could no longer guarantee Hungary’s political future, determine the succession or control what others would do with the work of his reign. Supernaturally, he could perform the greater act: he could surrender everything to Providence. The king who had spent his life learning that the crown belonged to Christ ended by placing the kingdom beneath the protection of Christ’s Mother.
The Postcommunion therefore reads almost as Stephen’s epitaph. The Church speaks of him as one “who as a reward for spreading that faith, was found worthy to pass from an earthly throne into the glory of Your heavenly Kingdom.” Consider the movement: born in 977, ruler in 997, crowned about 1000, bereaved of his heir in 1031, dead in 1038, canonised in 1083. He receives a crown, carries it beneath the Cross, spends himself for the Faith, relinquishes what he cannot keep, and passes from a throne which death must take away to a Kingdom which death cannot touch.
Carissimi, most of us shall never be entrusted with a nation. But every one of us has received a kingdom of some kind: a soul to govern, a vocation to fulfil, a family or community to serve, a measure of time, influence over others, sufferings which may be sanctified, truths which must be defended, and above all the Catholic Faith, which we did not invent and therefore possess no authority to remodel. “Trade till I come.” Do not bury it in the napkin of timidity, nostalgia or mere private preference. Live it. Hand it on. Let it govern. Let it cost something.
And when God finally asks us to relinquish what He once permitted us to hold, may Saint Stephen teach us his last and greatest wisdom: open the hands, return the talent, surrender the crown, stand beneath the Cross and place what you cannot preserve beneath the mantle of Our Lady. Then may we hear the words of the Communion: “Blessed is the servant, whom when the Lord shall come, He shall find watching.” Every earthly crown falls and every human kingdom passes. But the man who gives everything to Christ discovers at the end that he has lost nothing at all. He has simply exchanged the kingdom he could not keep for the Kingdom that can never be taken away.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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